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28 November 2005

Caffeinated Quote for the Day

It's possible to make a case that modern civilization as we know it was built by coffee. In the Middle Ages, people drank wine and beer, pretty much exclusively. Much of the history of medieval Europe makes a lot more sense when you realize it was populated largely by drunk teenagers.

Then Europe discovered caffeine. Boom! The Scientific Revolution. The Enlightenment. The Industrial Revolution. Heavily-caffeinated Europeans built global empires to ensure reliable supplies of tea, coffee, sugar, and chocolate. Without coffee, we'd still be fatalistic drunken peasants.

This reminded me of this passage in a book I copyedited a few years ago, Knight Errant, by R. Garcia y Robertson. It's set in the 15th century (with a modern gal time-traveling back there):

"It dawned her that nobles drank only wine and ale. And maybe hard cider and brandy, if they could get it. No tea, no coffee, and definitely no water. An alcoholic aristocracy—a government that went about permanently hammered—no wonder England was in such bad shape.

Coffee was also responsible --and still is-- for exploitation of the poor, in Central America and Africa, so we could also argue that it kept a portion of the third world destitute. Several organizations, such as Coffee Kids (http://coffekids.org), try to remedy this situation by trying to improve the quality of life for these people.

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